New Flat Season

[Alastair]

The turf flat season begins on Saturday as usual at Doncaster with the Lincoln taking centre stage.

What are you especially looking forward to ? In particular, do you have any new ideas regarding betting on the flat ? For me, something I have taken notice of in the last few years is the way that the quality of form from countries outside the UK, Ireland and France is underestimated by punters in this country. We have seen horses with form from the US, Germany, Italy, even Norway, win at decent prices - Tepin, Con Te Partiro, Artistica, Dylan Mouth, Easy Road- and this is something that I will continue to give particular attention to again in 2018.

[BillyHills]

Its a good point Alastair, I'm not sure the foreign raiders are underestimated as much as just ignored due to the difficulty on getting a grip on the form.

Some punters will just back what they are familiar with and skip the odd German runner for instance and just pretend its not there. Its a very dangerous game as these horses are having an impact more and more.

I can remember when Wesley Ward started having runners at Ascot, it was so difficult trying to weight up the form from Santa Anita, for example. Nowadays many of his are at the head of the market and maybe the value has gone out of his runners, especially as Dettori rides them.

I like French runners at Newmarket, I just think they act at that track for some reason.

To be honest i'm a jumps fan so will take it easy on the flat until May.

Good luck for the season

[Trotter]

This time of year I usually start thinking of trying to concentrate on a subset of Flat turf races and over the years this has included group races, 2yo races, European 2yo group and listed races, European group one races, sprint handicaps, staying handicaps, small field handicaps, sellers, stiff track handicap races, Irish races

I usually keep this up for a few weeks until it dawns on me that whatever subset I've chosen you either get far too many races or far too many days with no qualifying race

I still think one good source of potential 'edge' that you can get is to research trainers methods regarding 2yo maidens and novice races, in particular - do they get them ready first time out, do they come on a lot for their debuts, do they keep improving with racing, does the trainer have favourite tracks to introduce his better 2yo, does he have a better record at tracks close to his yard and so on. With not much form to go on the market is often determined by the name of the trainer and connections so having some idea of trainers methods and modus operandi can point up false favourites and likely EW shots at bigger prices

 

[SP___1992]

I'm just glad that the flat season is back! I never heavily invest in the flat season until the Guineas starts, although I make it a point to going to the Lincoln every year to see it in.

As I don't care much for national hunt racing I spend majority of my winter going over the turf form as well as investing in the all-weather racing, for the early part of the season I like to keep onside those that have been on the go over the winter (not as much as Spare Parts!) given that they have a fitness edge. It'll be especially interesting to see how wind ops play out for the flat season now the Racing Post have icons for everything to keep the punters up to date. They should realise we're only punters not Bletchley Park!

[BillyHills]

@SP___1992 Welcome to the forum mate, look forward to seeing your posts.

Do you think there is still an edge  in having ran on the AW? I'm not sure these days as trainers seem to be able to get them ready whenever they want. Look at the Lincoln stats, only one winner in the last 15 years had ran in a prep race.